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Janos Drugeth
'''Janos Drugeth' was a Hungarian nobleman and a grandson of Elizabeth Báthory. Information about his life is not readily available in English. Janos Drugeth in 1632 In addition to being a cavalry officer, Janos Drugeth was a close friend and confidant of Austro-Hungarian emperor Ferdinand III, and one of the few people who could call him by name when the two were in private. He was also an advocate for making peace with Wallenstein, partly in the interest of stabilizing Austria's northern border, and partly because he knew that making peace and trading with Wallenstein would be less costly than waging war against him. A few months before the death of Emperor Ferdinand II, Ferdinand III had sent Drugeth on a secret mission to Grantville. He had intended to set up a slow, steady transfer of technology, and occasionally people, being careful to stay within legal limits as the Americans saw them. This included taking advantage of American views on the right to emigrate. However, he'd learned that his agents in Grantville, the Englishmen Henry Gage and Lion Gardiner had turned his plan into what would very likely be a one-time operation that was nearly complete. After returning to Grantville, he realized that Gage and Gardiner had recruited many people who were quite skilled, but also that their enterprise had become illegal, as some of the people who would be leaving were fleeing the USE's authorities, and that some of what they were taking with them was stolen. Not too long after Drugeth and his party left Grantville, one of their three wagons broke an axle near the town of Hof. Drugeth decided that the risk of going into Hof and looking for a wainwright was too great, and that the wagon would be abandoned. The time needed to decide what to leave behind, and to repack the two surviving wagons, plus the time spent arguing about what to leave, meant that they did not get under way again until halfway through the next morning. This gave Noelle Stull and Eddie Junker time to catch up. They reached the abandoned wagon while Drugeth's party was still within half a mile of it. Since Eddie had stopped to put on a cuirass, Drugeth was able to spot them while looking back at the wagon, and he, Gage, and Gardiner started to ride to meet them. Before they could, though, Kelly Aviation's one and only flight-ready airplane, having been "borrowed" by Denise Beasley, Lannie Yost, and Noelle's half-brother Keenan Murphy, dropped a bomb on the broken wagon, as they did not recognize who was looking at it until after the bomb had been dropped. They then crashed into a tree while they were arguing over whose fault it was that they had bombed their friends. All five ended up as Drugeth's prisoners, under parole subject to his promise that they would be released unharmed. They were released just outside the Bohemian border town of Cheb, as he did not want to risk the observant Noelle noticing that he had suborned the local garrison's commander. By then, he and Noelle had become interested in one another, and they entered into a sort of long-distance relationship. References Category:Historical Figures Category:Nobility Category:Hungarians Category:1632 Characters Category:Died of Natural Causes (OTL)